Latest / Kitco MINING / The Dollar’s Power Is Pushing Central Banks Toward Gold | Edward Fishman

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The Dollar’s Power Is Pushing Central Banks Toward Gold | Edward Fishman · Kitco MINING

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Kitco Mining on-site coverage of Mining Forum Americas is presented by Metalla Royalty and Streaming.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Choke points, what are they and why are they relevant?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to Kitco Mining with me, Paul Harris, here at the 2026 Mining Forum America's Conference in Colorado Springs.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Joining me now is Edward Fishman, Senior Fellow and Director of the Morris R.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Greenberg Centre for Geoeconomics and the keynote speaker at this event.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Edward, thank you very much for joining me today.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's my pleasure.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: We're going to be talking a lot about your book, Choke Points, which we have here.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Choke Points, American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: This explores how the US transformed global trade, financing technology networks into weapons of statecraft.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Edward, what are choke points?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: So historically, we think of choke points as geographic features like the Strait of Hormuz or the Bosphorus, where one country has a dominant position and there are very few substitutes for trade that go through that narrow choke point.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's happened though, especially in the wake of hyperglobalization in the 1990s, is we now have choke points that exist outside of physical geography and in supply chains.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, we have China's rare earth minerals where they refine 90% of the global supply, or NVIDIA's AI chips, which is 85% market share of global AI accelerators, or most importantly of all, the US dollar, which is involved in 90% of all foreign exchange transactions.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: And each of these choke points have basically three things in common.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: One is that a country or coalition of close allies has a concentrated dominant market share.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Second, they're very, very difficult to substitute, would take years, if not decades, in some cases, to produce a substitute.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then third, and arguably most importantly, is that the countries that control these choke points can weaponize them with asymmetric impact.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is when the US cuts off a foreign bank from the dollar, it could be existential for that bank and it won't affect the United States at all.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the same thing is true very much of China with rare earth metals.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: But with um the I suppose the thing that people are really focusing on in this context has been uh you know what what the US and the US dollar and SWIFT and Russia and sanctions and things of that nature.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that caused the rest of the world to sit up and take notice and say, hey, if it happens to them, it can happen to us.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um and these things may be difficult to substitute, but that doesn't mean they're not trying, I guess.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly, you know, we're here uh at a mining forum.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the big story over the last few years with the run-up in gold prices, much of that has been central banks hedging against fear of being cut off from the dollar system.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's why since the United States and the rest of the G7 sanctioned Russia's central bank in uh February of 2022, we've seen central banks actually double their annual purchases of gold up to about a thousand metric tons uh per year totally.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So um certainly there there's not a direct substitute.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Gold is not uh being used, uh, for instance, as a medium of exchange, but at least as a store of value hedge, uh gold has has benefited a lot from this geopolitical turmoil.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Now, during your introductory comments, Edward, you mentioned about you know China and rare earths having a dominance, but uh that's part of a broader critical minerals narrative.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: China is dominating other critical minerals as well.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: The US has really set up, sat up and took notice, so has the European Union, and they are consciously trying to change the balance there through things like French oring initiatives and what have you.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: How successful do you think those initiatives can be or will be?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we're starting from a significant deficit.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean the EU has a list of 34 critical materials, and I think 17 of those 34 uh China either produces or refines over 70% of the global supply.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we are we're operating from a significant uh deficit, and there's a long way for us uh to go.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I think sort of uh the flip side of what we were talking before, where countries have seen their vulnerability to the dollar, China create has created an alternative payment system called CIPS, central banks have been stockpiling gold, is after China did weaponize those rare earths last year, you have a similar kind of scramble for economic security that we see in the West, right?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where the United States government, uh just since last year, has poured about$10 billion of uh equity and loan investments into various critical minerals projects.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I think we're we're you know that there are promising signs, right?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Governments um certainly see the need to start supporting uh these industries to break China's choke point.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if I'm being realistic, I don't think we're anywhere near doing that.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I know Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary last year said that it would take two years for us uh to break uh China's rare earth choke point.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's overly optimistic.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think the best we can really hope for is probably by the end of the decade, not supplanting China, but at least diluting their market share sufficiently that critical minerals are no longer a choke point that China can use for economic warfare.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: And there's other critical minerals, of course, such as tungsten, which is uh the past couple of years has come to the top of agenda because that's and that's a key one because that's used in in weaponry.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that there are really sort of uh sort of two classes of uh you know minerals when you think about economic security.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: There are these choke points that are relevant for the civilian economy, right?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: We saw when uh you know China uh did impose those export controls on rare earths, Ford had to idle one of its factories that produces the Explorer SUV.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Suzuki had to close one of its factories that produced uh one of its uh trademark uh vehicles.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But there are also these economic security pain points in the military sector.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And those are quite a bit harder because realistically, the US and China are military rivals.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're both preparing for the possibility, you know, God forbid, of fighting a war against each other.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've seen China now uh do export controls on antimony that they did in 2024.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: You saw the tungsten licensing regime, as you mentioned, come into force last year.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I think on this area, you know, there's a little bit more of a head start the US has in that they're they're we're more aware of these vulnerabilities and that the Pentagon, I think, um has been doing everything it can to try to break it, but it's still a serious problem.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: With the US financial sanctions and and what they've done with SWIFT, uh it seems that there's a broad consensus around the world that the US is overreached by doing that.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Whether that was deliberate or not, that's the one of the outcomes.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: In your view, is it possible for the US to sort of reel that back in and become you know friends with everybody again, or has the trust gone?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Ugh I look, I think that when it comes to countries like China, I don't think there's any chance that China is going to stop trying to build alternatives to the dollar.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it makes sense, right?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you were sitting in China right now, and would you feel comfortable with the fact that 70% of your trade is settled in dollars?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: The same way that here in the United States, we don't feel comfortable with the fact that we can't produce a lot of the critical medicines here uh without access to active pharmaceutical ingredients and key starting materials from China.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think the bigger question isn't so much the China's and Russia's of the world, it's really Canada, Europe, Japan, American allies that really hadn't been worried about American economic warfare.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: But over the last 18 months during Trump's second term, Trump has used tariffs and other uh export controls against allies.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, you now have conversations in places even like Canada about, you know, can we depend on the US market?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was in Alberta last week, where all of the energy executives I talked about, the main thing on their mind was can we build pipelines to the west coast of our country so that we can export oil to Asia and not just to the United States.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that trust um can still be regained, but if we keep weaponizing American economic might against our allies, um, you know, they're gonna make the same decision that China has made.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's one of the real head scratches for a lot of people is that given this uh uh environment we're talking about and the need or the perceived need for friendshowing, um, which would seem to be you know reaching out to your friends and allies to strengthen relationships, instead of that, the president of the United States is looking, is throwing tariffs rounds on pretty much everybody, friend and foe alike, um, causing countries such as Canada, such as Mexico, such as the European Union, to question whether the US is actually an ally or a friend at all.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a big problem.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the only solution is really going to be legislative guardrails.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because, I mean, executives, you know, especially in the mining industry, you're thinking about capital investments that are billions and billions of dollars over many years.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: You want certainty that, you know, these investments cross-border are not going to be disrupted by geopolitics.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm hopeful that at some point Congress might consider imposing some guardrails on the president's ability to unilaterally impose you know tariffs and sanctions on American allies.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's the kind of trust that executives are going to need to make those types of long-term investments.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think when we think about minerals, I mean it's it's particularly uh frustrating.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: You meant you call it a heads a head scratcher because we we've seen that's being polite.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've seen our our vulnerability to China's rare earths.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I say we, certainly here in the US, but Canada's seen it, Europe's seen it, the Asian uh uh allies have seen it.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about American allies, you know, Canada, Australia, you know, these are some of the most proficient mining nations in the world.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it would make a lot of sense for us to kind of lock arms and try to break this dependence together.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you you talk about guardrails, Edward, and the U.S.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: has the midterm elections coming up in November.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, if if the Republicans lose the Senate, is that the moment a time when potentially some of those guardrails could be implemented?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's possible.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: I know there, you know, there's already interest um uh, you know, I've I've from a number of members of Congress in similar types of guardrails.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, one of the big changes we've seen politically on this issue since Trump's first term, you know, during Trump's first term, he really kind of resurrected tariffs.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, tariffs hadn't been used uh uh very much in the United States for decades.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he he did it you know in in a relatively measured format, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: There were tariffs on China, there were some tariffs on certain sectors, but they were relatively low, all things considered.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think Trump uh turned tariffs into a political winner during his first term because they weren't so high that they deeply disrupted American business or they didn't raise prices much for American consumers, but they allowed uh uh Americans to see that Trump was kind of protecting them against, you know, uh uh you know competitors like China.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, that's part of the reason Biden retained most of Trump's tariffs.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think what has happened though in the last 18 months, with Trump's tariffs now being substantially higher than they were uh during uh the first term, American politics has shifted on tariffs.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now tariffs are broadly unpopular.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Most Americans believe that tariffs are taxes, that they're raising prices.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I could see a more anti-tariff coalition actually between Democrats and Republicans in the center forming uh in the next few years.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, tariffs are one of those wonderful things.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: They sound very nationalistic and great until you actually experience the impacts of them.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's always inbound rather than outbound.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um let's move on to the Strait of Hamous and Iran and what's happening there, because obviously that's been uh arguably the dominant news story this year, and it's certainly a big impact on this sector, the mining sector, because of the impact on fuel costs.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: What is really going on in the there?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: Is this really about Iran?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Is this a a bigger play here because um, you know, as some kind of context or pretext, Saudi Arabia was increasingly looking to trade oil uh with China, not in the US doors, looking to break from the petrodollar pact.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is this a way, broadly speaking, of the US saying to the region, you still need us?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So look, I think that President Trump fell into a trap that many leaders fall into, which is hubris, right?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at what happened last year in the Trump administration, when he came back to the White House, he initially tried to resurrect his maximum pressure strategy against Iran and Venezuela.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: This was a strategy he created during his first term, which was basically to pressure both of those countries as much economically as possible to try to get a maximalist outcome.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Ideally, regime change, right?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't working.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, China uh was buying pretty much all of uh both uh Venezuela and Iran's oil.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And Trump wasn't willing to sort of court a uh a trade conflict with China, especially after the rare earths episode in April of last year.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happened?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Trump first escalated from the use of economic pressure to military force against Iran, Operation Midnight Hammer last June, where which was very successful, uh, you know, uh took out large parts of Iran's nuclear program.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, at the beginning of this year, January 3rd, you have um the operation that captured Nicholas Maduro and his wife.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was you know one of the more stunning uh successful operational raids in American military history.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think after seeing those two operations, Trump said, hold on a second, why was I trying economic pressure when I have this military easy button?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I could just send the special forces in, pick up Maduro from his compound in Caracas and bring him to Brooklyn, a couple miles from my apartment.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's quite remarkable, right?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I think what happened was, again, hubris.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: He thinks, well, why am I settling for taking out Iran's nuclear program?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get regime change.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what he tried to do.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he, uh Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu on February 28th, the first day of the strikes, they kill the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Hameini.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: You just hand the hand over the rule from him to his son, who's 30 years younger and even more extreme.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: You basically create uh a hard line, even more hard-line regime that really wants uh nuclear weapons, and Iran then, of course, retaliates by seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the initial war aim, regime change has failed.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And right now, the Trump administration is in damage control mode, trying to reclaim the Strait of Hormuz from Iran.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so this has shifted from being a war that was really about the US on the offensive trying to get a new regime in Iran, to one where the US is trying to basically just restore the status quo ante.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, throughout history, how many leaders have uh pressed the military easy button and then said, oops, it's not quite as easy as it seems.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you know the America's the biggest military superpower.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's a it's a temptation a lot of presidents have fallen under.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: As the situation has been playing out over the past few months, to a certain extent, China's response has been muted or even non-existent.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: What what do you think is going on there?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Are they just perhaps waiting to see how this plays out and where they may be able to, you know, gain position?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so look, I think there's a very simple mantra that is guiding uh Beijing's policy right now, which is never disturb your enemy while they're making a mistake.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think, you know, US policy now, since you know, what, 15 years now, has been trying to pivot to Asia, right?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: To try to amass our uh, you know, our military firepower in the Indo-Pacific to try to deter China, uh Chinese aggression against you know Taiwan or other players uh in the region.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's happened?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: America's completely fixated on the Middle East right now, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we we had to bring carrier strike groups from the Asia Pacific to the Middle East, right?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and and beyond that, I think you know the United States has been actually bearing a lot of the blame globally for the run-up in in fuel prices, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, one of the things that's more interesting is, you know, uh, if you look at a lot of the developing world, and you're in the United States, we've been largely sheltered from some of these outcomes.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: You've seen significant fuel rationing, very big disturbances to everyday life.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the polling suggests that these people blame the United States, not China, for this, and not certainly not Iran either.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think China has been winning reputationally from this.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: They've also shown that they can, you know, play a quite remarkable role in the global oil market by cutting back their imports and stabilizing prices.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's what China's after right now.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically not trying to, they're not gonna bail Trump out.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna, you know, necessarily overtly support the Iranians, although they are definitely providing um certain materials to the Iranians.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think they're just happy kind of letting this uh become another forever war for the United States.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Given this context and this confluence of factors, is it perhaps surprising that China hasn't sought to make good on its promise or threat to physically retake Taiwan by force?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: You've had the redeployment of US carrier groups from the Asia-Pacific uh theater into the Middle Eastern theater.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: The US has obviously depleted some of its weapons and top weapons capability as well.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but China still sitting and watching.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I mean, the other mantra I'll give you in this one is actually from uh, you know, ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu is you know, the acne of skill is not to win 100 battles in 100 uh uh fights, it's to win without fighting, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think China sees history moving in its direction.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: They see the United States as a declining power.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: They think that Taiwanese politics may actually move in their direction in the upcoming coming election.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's possible that the Taiwanese elect a more China uh leader is more friendly uh toward mainland China.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I think uh Xi Jinping right now, despite I think what you said is very true, it would be a good time probably uh to seize uh to to act given uh America being distracted.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think they see history moving in their direction.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think the bigger question is two, three years from now, let's say history hasn't moved in in their direction.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say that Taiwanese people are even more uh you know and anti- you know, against you know reincorporation into mainland China, maybe then you know they would they would make that decision.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Now um Premier Xi Jinping visited uh President Trump in Washington last week, and uh I think a lot of people were surprised at how how how tame the news coming out of that uh summit or that meeting was.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing, at least publicly, nothing substantial was discussed.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: There was no reprimand in either direction.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: Agree.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that it was a big nothing burger, but I think that's what you know both sides really want right now, uh, given that there is this truce that was put in place.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think we we can't really um stress enough how big of a sea change there's been in US policy toward China, right?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was Trump during his first term that really inaugurated a much more hawkish policy from Washington toward Beijing.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really in the wake of those rare earth export controls that we've been discussing last April that really sh you know sent shockwaves across the American economy, that the White House now believes that it needs the time, that it basically it needs to come to a cold peace with China to give time for us to scale up our alternatives to Chinese critical minerals.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, thank you.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: I want to sort of branch out from the the Gulf to the Red Sea because obviously the most recent twist of that dispute is the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels really sort of taking the fight uh to Saudi Arabia gaining ground and potentially repeating the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in the Red Sea.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: That would seem to be very uh very serious indeed.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the potential ramifications to that for the oil market um in particular.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: The US is more or less sufficient in oil, but it's the rest of the world that suffers with these channels closed.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it it you know, it's almost forgotten by now given what's happened with the Strait of Hormuz uh in the last year.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: But the Houthis really were the ones who kind of you know created this model of using anti-ship missiles and drones to control a strait, right?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they did with the Bab al-Mendeb a few years ago.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: They came to sort of an uneasy truce with the Saudis, and that has now broken down.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: The thing that's interesting, though, is the Houthis have come out and said, you know, we are not gonna target European vessels.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna target American vessels.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is really um just a bilateral uh, you know, TIFF that we have with the Saudi government.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see, right?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you were to have a substantial disruption of the BAB where it was actually closed to everybody, it would be a much bigger stress on the global oil market.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing, though, to watch for is, you know, you do have to give some credit to CENTCOM, you know, the U.S.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: military command in the Middle East.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: They've done a better job in the last couple months of actually getting some oil out of the Strait of Hormuz.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they have this operation where um tankers from the state-owned uh uh oil companies in the UAE and Saudi uh put some oil on tankers, they kind of shuttle them just to the right outside the Strait of Hormuz under protection by the US Navy and then do ship-to-ship transfers uh uh onward to the global markets.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: You have been actually getting some more oil out of the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks as well.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: Given that the Houthis rebels are backed by Iran, uh how how credible is it that they say, oh, we're not gonna touch certain shipping, this is uh uh a fight with Saudi Arabia?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Surely it's in Iran's interest to have both choke points closed.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the thing is though, it's interesting.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't view the Houthis as just a pure puppet of the Iranian regime.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that they also um do have um they are an independent actor, right?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're allied uh with uh the Iranian regime.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm with you.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you're the Iranians, you would love uh to have both the strait and the Babel Mendeb closed because that will put maximum pressure, if you will, to use uh to coin a phrase uh on the US economy.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: But um but they have not been able to get that yet.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, unfortunately, Edward, that's all we have time for.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: This has been fascinating.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Edward Fishman, thank you very much for joining me today.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for uh having me on the show.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And we have a lot more to come from the 2026 Gold Forum Americas.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: So stay tuned.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: This is Paul Harris for KitCo Mining.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: KitCo Mining on site coverage of Mining Forum Americas is presented by Metalla Royalty and streaming.